writing women who break the mold
My Muscatine writing group, Writers on the Avenue, has a writing exercise they’ve been doing for quite some time. (Years. Perhaps decades.) Members at a meeting generate a list of words–without looking at what others have suggested–and then, for the
There’s a new concept emerging in the writing community that wasn’t on my radar a decade ago, and that is the notion of a sensitivity reader. Different from a beta reader–someone you find to read your work-in-progress for free, purely
After a spring of record flooding, the summer has turned dry. Dust blows over the gravel roads to and from Girl Scout Camp. Farmers scan the sky, and my husband hauls out the hose to water the garden. We’ve left
So, agent #60 has passed on THE LIGHTED HEART, and 60 seems like a nice milestone at which to pause and reflect on my submission process. Actually, not all 60 have been agents. Three have been novel contests, one of
I keep running into this word lately in my writing life: “fit.” Agents politely inform me that my novel is not the right fit for their list. (What, their list doesn’t have room for an intelligent, ambitious young woman from
It’s a new year. Time to make resolutions, plans, and goals. Since thoughts create reality, and imagining something very specifically is said to bring it to life, I’m indulging in a sequence of wild and very specific fantasies around successfully